How can anyone like an OS that does this? (or, why I love OS X)

[7on]

Or when you have a new IM, have a very annoying sound loop.

 

[rueyeet]

Microsoft Access is also a really nice program. Basically, if you open a database that's on the network and you unplug the network while the db is open, it pops up error message after error message. So, after like an hour you have to close 200 alerts saying that there was a network error. As if one wasn't enough....

Oooooh, I *hate* that one. Access has actually become so fubar'd after losing the network connection to the database that I eventually had to reboot my whole system. Though, that was under Access 97 on Windows 95. Access 2000 under Windows 2000 doesn't behave half as badly.

I think that if Microsoft hadn't taken over the way it did, one of three scenarios would have unfolded:

Scenario #1: The personal computer industry could have continued to be split among a variety of vendors, each with their own proprietary hardware, OS, and software (think the Amiga/Commodore days). In the absence of either one ubiquitous proprietary product or interoperable open standards, the computer world would have remained the dominion of the geeks and tech-heads, split into narrowly defined camps advocating their chosen vendor. The Internet revolution would never have happened, or would have taken a LOT longer.

Scenario #3: In the absence of a single dominant player to establish a de facto standard of computing, the unworkability of the dozens of competing standards could have caused the computing industry to organize around open standards. This would have led to a plethora of OSs and hardware, but all supporting the same basic functionalities, so it would have come down to whoever could make the technology usable by and desirable to the most people. The computing world would today be a constant see-saw between innovation and compatibility. Maybe the Internet would have exploded the way it did, and maybe not.

Scenario #2: Someone else would have taken the role of Microsoft, and things would end up exactly where they are today. Same crap, different name.

If there's one thing that Microsoft really did, it was to standardize the world of computing. Even if theirs is a de facto, proprietary standard, and even though it isn't necessarily the best standard, it still enabled computer use to spread to the ordinary, non-tech person. And that's what led to the explosive growth of the Internet and sped the adoption of the digital age. Not by making computers easier to use, but by making them work together so that they could be EVERYWHERE. If everyone had just had different stuff that didn't work together, we wouldn't be posting here today.

 

[mvc]

If there's one thing that Microsoft really did, it was to standardize the world of computing. Even if theirs is a de facto, proprietary standard, and even though it isn't necessarily the best standard, it still enabled computer use to spread to the ordinary, non-tech person. And that's what led to the explosive growth of the Internet and sped the adoption of the digital age. Not by making computers easier to use, but by making them work together so that they could be EVERYWHERE. If everyone had just had different stuff that didn't work together, we wouldn't be posting here today.

And we should be thankful that it happened this way.

No, really.

Now WE with OS X have an excellent OS that is NOT mainstream and has to innovate and remain excellent to compete at all.

And because it is a minor but competing OS it is obscure yet well engineered and has therefore remained essentially free of malware and other truly bad user experiences.

So I for one welcome our Microsoft Overlords!







But you didn't hear me say that

 

[IJ Reilly]

Scenario #3: In the absence of a single dominant player to establish a de facto standard of computing, the unworkability of the dozens of competing standards could have caused the computing industry to organize around open standards. This would have led to a plethora of OSs and hardware, but all supporting the same basic functionalities, so it would have come down to whoever could make the technology usable by and desirable to the most people. The computing world would today be a constant see-saw between innovation and compatibility. Maybe the Internet would have exploded the way it did, and maybe not.

I think this is the most likely scenario, because it's how most industries evolve. I'll spare the analogies because it's just too easy to think of them.

The PC industry as it exists today is an anomaly, a mistake of history. If IBM had done a couple of things differently back in 1981-82, Bill Gates would be midlevel manager at some Fortune 500 company today, at best. (I'd prefer to think he'd have been a cubicle rat in a dead-end job from which he was just laid off.)

 

[Fukui]

I personally don't use to talk on conditionals,

What if..

what would ...

But my point in this case is simple:

We would be using NEXT OS and bashing apple, because apple forgot the main idea from Jobs and Woz, MS would be a small player programming for the big companies and trying to catch crowd from Linux.
The big cake would have been, in order, Apple, NEXT, SUN or Linux, Linux or SUN, MS, x-BSD ... it's only a theory but to debate on that is a waste of time...

BTW, offices would be using Mac OS 9.8 and we would have Next OS Panther, and other group would have Windows challenger...No XBOX in the stores, no virus, people trying to hack on Mac os 9.8 and we would write on Nextrumors.com

again, a waste of time!

I really wish next did win... we could be all runing on some type of unix, on just about any CPU any hardware we want, and no fear of one company controlling everything (Openstep could be implemented by lots of different companies)... programming would be a lot more fun to be sure...

 

[mpwolken]

Actually...

Yeah, the only think that mac os pesters us with is if you unplug a disk or microdrive without ejecting it first... stupid unix

Windows does the same thing, stupid operating systems...

Actually, it's a comprimise. If you want quasi-random access to a portable memory device, of any kind, then you need to unmount the drive before you unplug it. Otherwise, the unmounting of the drive would be done after every access, thus destroying performance. I agree that portable drives and operating systems should be designed differently. They should be instantly removeable, even in the middle of a read or write without corrupting the data, the operating system, or any program accessing that drive. It's all possible, it's just not implemented yet.

One of the most stupid problems I've ever had to deal with when it comes to portable drives is iTunes. I store my library on a firewire drive. On my Windows XP computer, iTunes set's a registry value to point to the portable drive. When I remove the drive, I can't use iTunes at all without changing the registry value and restarting the computer.

 

[ChrisH3677]

Keeping in mind that it’s not the OS that wants it back it’s either the program that uses the disk or Windows Installer...Which, OK, that TECHNICALLY is apart of the OS.
Simple. Solution....Put the CD back in the drive and let it finish. You might be finished with the disk. Doesn’t mean the program or MSI is finished.

Its a break in the program. You are removing the media before it’s finished with it. It would be similar to removing a CD say Adobe Photoshop on OS X with its 60% installed. What happens when you do that?
Windows has a ton of annoyances but you can't fault it when you are jumping the gun with removing the CD before its finished doing its business. *shrugs* whatever.

Might I ask what CD and app this was??

Yeah - I was burning a copy of Mandrake (on 3 CDs), and one of them autoplayed.

Altho I somewhat agree with you - you kinda missed the point. Which is: Cancel, Try Again, Continue all had the same affect - i.e. looped back to the same message. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over etc etc etc etc

Cancel should have cancelled.

A nice OS might have said something like "Hey?! Where did the CD I Was using go? Did you take it out? Do you want me to abort what I was doing - bearing in mind it could cause serious problems?" "Abort" "Oops Sorry! I've put the CD back in"

 

[ChrisH3677]

Right on, but I'm still concerned about your statement of having to "rebuilt your Mac twice in six weeks." I presume you mean reformat the drive and reinstall the OS. I've never had to do this even once with OSX and I also don't remember having to do it in 15 years of Classic MacOS use. Beware of people who tell to you reinstall OSX to fix a problem -- it's almost never actually necessary!

I woindered when someone would pick up that comment.

The first time back in early september it all just clagged up (turned out a rogue program's cache had taken all free disk space) and then when I rebooted it said there was no bootable partion. I did absolutely everything that the Apple Knowledgebase said, but in the end the only thing left to do was a rebuild (reformat and reinstall)

The second time last week I got a corrupt Catalog B-tree (keys swapped).
It manifest itself by displaying blank print dialog boxes and by Kernel panics when repairing or verifying permissions - even from the OS X install disk.

Again I did everything possible to avoid a rebuild.

I might add that I had a reasonably good backup regime, so lost nothing of value.

Both these were bad luck and I don't blame the OS or the hardware.

What impressed me though was the Apple Knowledge base which provided excellent support for working through attempting to resolve these.

That is another advantage Apple has by having control of the hardware and OS.

 

[IJ Reilly]

I'm still skeptical about your need to reformat in either instance. Disk cache files (which I presume is what you meant) can be deleted quite readily and in fact should go away entirely whenever you reboot. In fact most of them are automatically deleted on log-out. As for the b-tree error, this sounds like a fairly ordinary disk directory issue, which is usually corrected by running fsck in single user mode. If by chance (rare) it isn't repairable by this method (try a second or even third time if necessary!), a more comprehensive disk utility like DiskWarrior should by used before rolling out the big reinstall cannon.

Another utility I often recommend is Applejack, which can be found on VersionTracker. It's a script that runs in single-user mode and performs all of the standard, low-level OSX maintenance procedures at one time.

As maybe you can tell, I'm fighting kind of a one-man battle against the aggressive use of OSX reinstalls. They are recommended far too often (even by Apple!), and they rarely get at the problem. Unlike Windows, OSX has very little potential to hose itself. I mean, if I wanted to install OSs all the time, I'd use Windows, right?

Okay, I'll get off my soapbox now.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

I'm still skeptical about your need to reformat in either instance. Disk cache files (which I presume is what you meant) can be deleted quite readily and in fact should go away entirely whenever you reboot. In fact most of them are automatically deleted on log-out. As for the b-tree error, this sounds like a fairly ordinary disk directory issue, which is usually corrected by running fsck in single user mode. If by chance (rare) it isn't repairable by this method (try a second or even third time if necessary!), a more comprehensive disk utility like DiskWarrior should by used before rolling out the big reinstall cannon.

Another utility I often recommend is Applejack, which can be found on VersionTracker. It's a script that runs in single-user mode and performs all of the standard, low-level OSX maintenance procedures at one time.

As maybe you can tell, I'm fighting kind of a one-man battle against the aggressive use of OSX reinstalls. They are recommended far too often (even by Apple!), and they rarely get at the problem. Unlike Windows, OSX has very little potential to hose itself. I mean, if I wanted to install OSs all the time, I'd use Windows, right?

Okay, I'll get off my soapbox now.

I just wanted to point out that disk caches and program caches are two different beasts. Disk caching is managed by Mac OS X itself, and is handled like you describe. Program caches are managed by the program that created them, not by Mac OS X - and are NOT deleted on restart/logout - so the situation ChrisH3677 described is entirely plausible with the cache filling up the disk.

 

[IJ Reilly]

I just wanted to point out that disk caches and program caches are two different beasts. Disk caching is managed by Mac OS X itself, and is handled like you describe. Program caches are managed by the program that created them, not by Mac OS X - and are NOT deleted on restart/logout - so the situation ChrisH3677 described is entirely plausible with the cache filling up the disk.

If that's what he meant, sure. But in that case, wouldn't deleting the misbehaving application any errant caches it created be a much tidier solution than starting completely over?

 

[wrldwzrd89]

If that's what he meant, sure. But in that case, wouldn't deleting the misbehaving application any errant caches it created be a much tidier solution than starting completely over?

Yes it would, unless the lack of disk space forced a restart because Mac OS X locked up or crashed, in which case there's not a whole lot you can do unless you have a bootable volume you can boot from and trash the offending app and its caches from there.

 

[ChrisH3677]

I'm still skeptical about your need to reformat in either instance. Disk cache files (which I presume is what you meant) can be deleted quite readily and in fact should go away entirely whenever you reboot. In fact most of them are automatically deleted on log-out. As for the b-tree error, this sounds like a fairly ordinary disk directory issue, which is usually corrected by running fsck in single user mode. If by chance (rare) it isn't repairable by this method (try a second or even third time if necessary!), a more comprehensive disk utility like DiskWarrior should by used before rolling out the big reinstall cannon.

Another utility I often recommend is Applejack, which can be found on VersionTracker. It's a script that runs in single-user mode and performs all of the standard, low-level OSX maintenance procedures at one time.

As maybe you can tell, I'm fighting kind of a one-man battle against the aggressive use of OSX reinstalls. They are recommended far too often (even by Apple!), and they rarely get at the problem. Unlike Windows, OSX has very little potential to hose itself. I mean, if I wanted to install OSs all the time, I'd use Windows, right?

Okay, I'll get off my soapbox now.

Except for DiskWarrior which I don't have, I did all you suggest and more. Applejack couldn't repair the B-tree and when I ran it's repair permissions, it also did a Kernel Panic.

I chose to reinstall with a reformst because that's what everything I read recommended, and I knew that the OS X installer would like trigger a kernel panic, thus potentially leaving the system scrambled anyway.

The foggy details of the first reinstall are drifting back to me and I remember that I was able, eventually,to get the system up and running after doing absolutely everything suggested in the Apple KB, including two and a half reinstalls (without reformatting).
But since I had an empty system I tried a couple of foolhardy shortcuts to get things up quicker, which scramboled some things and meant i had to reinstall again, so I did the full reformat and reinstall then to be sure I had a totally clean system.

As a Windows tech, I didn't mind this coz it gave me a chance to compare things and learn a bit - and, among other things, I learned how good OS X is, and how good the Apple KB is.

PS I do wish I had DiskWarrior as what I've read of it, I'd expect it would have solved both my original probelms. But how often do you really need it? I was just unlucky to cop two in 6 weeks. Most folks wouldn't cop one in six years!

 

[ChrisH3677]

If that's what he meant, sure. But in that case, wouldn't deleting the misbehaving application any errant caches it created be a much tidier solution than starting completely over?

I can't be certain that that errant cache was the whole problem, coz as I say, when I booted, it said it couldn't find a startup partition. Would that happen if I ran out of disk space?

 

[CaptainHaddock]

f there's one thing that Microsoft really did, it was to standardize the world of computing. …And that's what led to the explosive growth of the Internet and sped the adoption of the digital age. If everyone had just had different stuff that didn't work together, we wouldn't be posting here today.

I strongly disagree. The Internet would have grown and the "digital age" would have been "adopted" even if there had been 10 widely competing platforms. It would have happened if Windows never existed. Remember that this whole Internet thing caught Microsoft *completely* off-guard, and the company had to do a full 360° to catch up.

Windows had nothing to do with the fact that the Internet and its "different stuff" work together. You can thank platform-agnostic protocols and standards like TCP/IP, e-mail, FTP, and HTML for that. You can thank open-source tools for that. Unix is much more responsible for the success of the Internet than Windows, and BBSes like AOL only started offering Internet access because their users demanded it.

Arguably, Windows is responsible for *holding back* the Internet. Widespread Windows spyware, worms, viruses, and trojans (thanks to the computer monoculture you were just praising) have made many people afraid of the Internet. Mailboxes full of offensive porn spam (sent by networks of zombied Windows machines) turn people off from using e-mail. Rampant Windows worms cause ISPs to block various ports and services that *should* be available as part of Internet access.

Need I go on? The Internet has succeeded so far in spite of Windows.

Now I go back to working on my virus and spyware-proof Mac.

 

[Mav451]

Another thing that drives me NUTS about Windows is how every little program can grab focus. You're trying to type in Word or Outlook, and every five seconds you have to reselect the window, because some stupid little background program grabs the focus. If I explicitly select a window, that window should stay selected come hell or high water. Computer systems should be designed around the concept that the user is God.

Lol. Come hell. But anyway, Firefox fortunately does not have this problem with external links (e.g. clinking link in AIM profiles). Assuming you have a Tabbrowser Pref or similar extension installed, you can set it to NOT take focus with clicked links. Ditto with links you click on >> you middle click, so it does not shift focus.

I think this is the same with DeadAIM as well. The AIM chat window does not steal focus--but especially if you have it on tabbed settings.